


Jack Robinson's War

by THG



Series: Jack Robinson's War Stories [1]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Backstory, First World War, Gen, History, Mild violence (including against animals), Vulgar Language, War Stories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:47:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THG/pseuds/THG
Summary: Scenes and vignettes from Jack's service in the First World War, starting with a missing scene from the end of Death and Hysteria.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher & Jack Robinson
Series: Jack Robinson's War Stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123985
Comments: 68
Kudos: 44





	1. A Very Ordinary War

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing Jack's wartime backstory about a year ago, drawing on my research as a professional historian specialising in the social and cultural history of the First World War. That has developed into something longer and more complicated; these are some of the scenes and vignettes that retain a clear connection to their original inspiration, starting with a short interlude at the end of Death and Hysteria. I will keep adding as I keep writing.
> 
> This is my first foray into fiction based on my research. I hope you enjoy it.

Jack stood by the window humming softly to himself after the others had left the room – the doctor to pack his bags, Dot and Mr Butler to do the dishes, Cec and Bert to prepare the car for Phryne’s departure, Phryne herself, accompanied by Jane, escorting her aunt upstairs for a much needed rest.

‘…to the land of my dreams.’

Jack began to sing softly to himself, the tune altering without any conscious thought, the pattern still so familiar after all these years.

‘Keep the home fires burning  
While your heart is yearning  
Though your lad is far away –‘

‘You boys always did like the sentimental ones, didn’t you?’

Abruptly, Jack broke off, startled by the sound of Phryne’s voice. For once, he had been so lost in his own thoughts that he had not been aware of her the moment she re-entered the room.

‘Wha – sorry, Miss Fisher?’

‘Keep the Home Fires Burning, you boys loved to sing it, although The Long, Long Trail did run it close.’ Her lips tilted up in a small smile.

‘Well, the Poms always were a sentimental lot, though it was the Canucks and the Yanks who liked The Long, Long Trail. And it made a change from Waltzing Matilda among our lot!’

This time she threw back her head and laughed. ‘I’ll warrant!’ Then she sobered. ‘You’ve never talked about it, the war, you know.’

He looked at her, surprised. ‘No, I don’t suppose I have – to you.’

She hurried on. ‘You don’t have to, you know, not if it’s too painful. I don’t mean to pry. I know some men don’t want to talk about it…’ She trailed off, uncharacteristically.

‘No, it’s not that. I don’t mind talking about it; I’ve swapped my fair share of old soldier’s tales down at the RSSILA of a Saturday night. It just,’ he squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, trying to get his thoughts in order. All the times she could have asked him about the war and she wanted to know about it now? ‘I don’t know, never really came up, did it?’

‘Well, there was the Bolkonsky case!’

‘True, although I seem to recall you were more interested in eliciting the stories of another old soldier than you were in hearing mine on that case.’

She glanced sideways at him, assessing how much resentment he still felt. His face, she was relieved to see, was calm, slightly amused even. ‘Fair enough, Jack, but you have to admit, it was pertinent in the end, even if the method of evidence gathering was – unconventional.’

‘That is one way to put it, Miss Fisher.’ He quirked an eyebrow at her, but she was not to be diverted.

‘And there was the time we tracked down Wollit‘s bayonet, and the run in with that poor man, Archie. That one certainly brought back plenty of memories for me…’ She trailed off, a faraway look in her eye.

‘Well, you never said anything that time, either.’ 

‘No, I suppose not. But then, you never asked.’

‘Well, Miss Fisher, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I’ve never spoken about it because you never asked. Which raises the question,’ he quirked an interrogative eyebrow at her, ‘why all these questions? Why now? As you say, we’ve encountered the legacy of the war plenty of times in our work together, but you’ve never asked me about it. Not even over cocktails after that triple arrest.’

‘No, I suppose I haven’t.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know. It never seemed quite the right moment. But I saw your face when we started singing tonight. And this case…I guess it brought home to me the danger of repressed memories. So when I heard you singing an old soldier’s song, well, it did seem the moment might have come.’

He gave her his familiar, wry smile. ‘Well, I can assure you, Miss Fisher, whatever expression you may have noticed on my face in passing, my memories of the war are definitely not repressed. As I say, I have talked about them – just not you.’

‘Did you talk about them to Rosie, then?’ She still couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice, dammit.

He sighed, turning to lean against the window sill and look at her. ‘No, not Rosie.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, it’s hardly a subject one brings up over the breakfast table. “Pass the kippers, dear, and did I ever tell you about the time old Tommo Jenkins got his legs blown off at Ypres?”’

‘Well, no, I suppose not, when you put it like that.’

‘No, that’s not really fair.’ He shook his head slightly and stared hard at the toes of his brogues. ‘Life rather got in the way – getting back into the job and finding my feet again out of uniform, or at least in a different one. Going from lieutenant to senior constable was a bit of a shock, I must admit. And working out who I had married all over again. Four years is a long time apart when you are that young, you know. I don’t think either of us was the same person as when I left. I know I wasn’t.’ He gave one of his sardonic smiles. ‘I was a cocky young prig when I enlisted, already on the high road to Commissioner, just like old man Sanderson. The war was just another rung on the ladder – I was going to serve my country, earn my stripes and come home to the thanks of a grateful nation, automatic promotion and a pliant and adoring wife.’

‘I can see how that dream might not survive the trenches.’

He let out a bark of laughter . ‘It didn’t survive a week’s training at Mena! Sand flies have a way of denting a man’s dreams of heroic glory! But some of it did survive – even those months in and out of the line at Passchandaele. Not the ambition but serving my country – making it safe for ordinary people to live their lives in peace.’

‘Jack Robinson, the man with a plan to make the streets of Melbourne safe…’

He looked up at her, startled. ‘I forgot I told you that. Yes, that was it. I lost my ambition somewhere in the Flanders mud, but not my motivation. But I never managed to explain that to Rosie. I’m not sure she really wanted to hear about it. It was over and done and she wanted to get on with life. And a lot them, like her father, only wanted to hear the tidy version, the glory without the blood and guts. Or maybe I just didn’t have the words. How do you describe the sound of big guns to someone who has never heard them, except as the rumble of distant thunder? It doesn’t start to capture the combination of fear and familiarity…. Or the gruesome ridiculousness of some of the things we did to make life bearable. There was one poor devil – the Captain we called him – whose skull was exposed in part of trench I was in in April ’17, just at the junction with the communication trench. We had about three spells there, and every time we went in and out, we saluted him, from the Colonel on down. Not to have done so would have meant bad luck for the whole battalion, and anyone who didn’t would get in the neck from his mates.’

He shook his head. ‘I can tell the story, and even laugh at it now, which not everyone who hears can understand. It sounds so grotesque and undignified. And certainly not a laughing matter. He was somebody’s son, as the old song says. But it doesn’t explain how if felt, what it meant to us at the time, to know the old Captain was watching over us. We did respect him, you know, and were grateful to him for keeping us safe.’

‘Did I ever call you cynical in the face of mysteries you don’t understand, Jack? I am sorry!’

He shrugged, lightly. ‘Well, we were all superstitious in our own ways over there, whether it was developing rituals which would keep you safe or the fatalism that said if a bomb had your name on it there was nothing you could do. But I had no time for the sort of guff Mrs Bolkonsky was spouting, not then and not since. Manipulating the grief of people like your aunt to her own ends and for her own gain.’ Anger suddenly took hold of him. ‘And using the death of that poor lad Basil as an excuse to commit murder –! I sat with the mother of my best mate, two years after he died, and watched her weep for her only son as if she had only lost him the day before. I had watched him bleed to death, calling for water and for her, and I couldn’t tell her – I was too much of a coward. And then you wonder why I hold no truck with the lies and manipulations of the Mrs Bolkonskys of this world!’

Phryne laid a hand gently on his arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Jack. I didn’t know. I had no idea. I wouldn’t have made a joke of it if I had. But you never let on.’

He let out a sigh. ‘No. That was one thing I did learn, to control my emotions. A policeman who loses his temper tends not to get his man. Old man Sanderson of all people used to tell me that. He always said it was my greatest professional failing, letting my heart rule my head. It is different for you – you can have the luxury of fighting for your lost lambs - but learning when to talk and when to keep mum has served me well over the years.’

‘So no need for the talking cure, then?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Phryne!’ Unexpectedly his self-control cracked. ‘I don’t need curing! Yes, I came back from the war a different man from the green lad I went out, but it didn’t make me an invalid, even if it tried its damnedest to kill me. It didn’t turn me into a violent brute, or give me a what-d’you-call-it, complex about death or anything of that sort. Do I ever want to go through it again? No, of course not. War is hell and only a fool or a psychopath would tell you otherwise – they are the ones with a death wish, if you like. But I don’t want to forget that I went through it either. It was necessary, a job we had no choice but to do, and I’m a better man because I played my part in it. I grew up during those years – I had to; I met people I would never have met otherwise – a lot of them better men than I am, a lot of them men who didn’t come home. They made me who I am today, and I can’t, I won’t ever regret that. To do so would be to dishonour their memory and their effort. So no, I don’t – repress it? Is that the phrase? I don’t mean that I obsessively relive it like those poor bastards out in Daylesford, thinking every backfiring car is the morning hate starting up or a sniper with a bead on their observation post. I didn’t even dream about it, not after the first year or so, once I was back in the job and had that to focus on. But it is part of who I am, part of my life, it always will be and I make no apologies for that.’ 

He shrugged, regaining a measure of a calm after his uncharacteristic outburst ‘As I say, I’ve told a tale or two over a beer. And I’ve told Collins what it was like, really like, if only point out that soldiering was about as boring as police work most of the time and considerably colder than even a midwinter midnight beat! I’ve even swapped a yarn with Bert and Cec. We were in the same sector at Ypres, you know. At different times, but they remembered the estaminet where Estelle served the most viscious plonk you’ve ever tasted…’ His gazed into the mid-distance, seeing a scene quite different from Mrs Stanley’s comfortable drawing room, his mouth twitching slightly in a reminiscent smile.

‘Jack…’ Phryne’s light touch on his arm brought him back to the present, her fine-boned face, solemn and sympathetic, easily overcoming the memory of Estelle’s coarser charms.

He coughed, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Fisher. You had no way of knowing, and it isn’t fair to lose my temper with you like that. If I had known you had wanted to hear about it, I would have told you, but I don’t see why anyone would necessarily. Mine was a very ordinary war, you know.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t apologise, Jack. As you once said to me, it only confuses me. And I don’t think anyone had an ordinary war, did they? Not even those at home. But I am glad you told me. And I hope you will tell me more, some day – over a beer, perhaps, or a glass of vin ordinaire.’

‘I’m sure we can find something appropriate.’ He smiled at her and then at the maid who entered, holding his hat and coat. ‘Although possibly not at this time of day.’

‘Perhaps not.’ She returned his smile. ‘Thank you, Millie. I will see the gentleman out.’

As they walked through cool, tiled hallway, they heard a murmur of voices, then the click of a closing door and the brisk sound of Mrs Stanley’s lady’s maid’s footsteps on the floor above.

‘Poor Aunt Prudence,’ sighed Phryne as they emerged into the warm sunshine. ‘It has indeed been a long and winding trail.’

‘A pity it took two took two murders to prove that it’s not healthy to bottle things up,’ Jack replied, with only the slightest hint of irony.

‘Which reminds me,’ she said, her tone lightening, ‘you never did tell all about the Chinese brothel.’

‘I have trouble recalling trauma.’ The supressed laughter was now clear in his words.

‘Jack Robinson, you promised me! Do I have to put you on the couch and psychoanalyse you?’

‘Sounds inviting. Perhaps another time, in a more – intimate – setting.’ Now his voice was husky.

‘I’ll hold you to that.’ She smiled at him, glad that they were friends and sparring partners again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a historian, of course there are end notes!
> 
> N.B. Most of these refer to the British context, rather than a specifically Australian one. I still have a lot more reading to do into the Australian literature.
> 
> On the popularity and importance of music to servicemen, see Emma Hanna, Sounds of War: Music in the British Armed Forces During the Great War (2020).
> 
> RSSILA: Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial Services League of Australia, founded 1916, now the Returned & Services League (RSL). A support and political lobbying group for ex-service members, the equivalent of the Royal British Legion in the UK.
> 
> Jack's comment about sand flies (and later remarks) is inspired by Captain Charlie May's diary entry for 29th January, 1916: 'We go because it is right and proper that we should. But I do not think there is one high-souled amongst us. On the contrary we are all rather bored with the job, the thought of the bally mud and water is quite sufficient to extinguish keenness, and we are all so painfully ordinary that we think of leave a great deal more than we do of the nobleness of our present calling. When one is tired and unwashed I think one is legitimately entitled to refuse to feel noble, if one so desires.' (Imperial War Museums, Documents.1534) This is one of my favourite quotations from my research.
> 
> On who ex-servicemen spoke to, or failed to speak to after the war, see Joel Morley, 'Dad ‘never said much’ but… Young Men and Great War Veterans in Day-to-Day-Life in Interwar Britain', Twentieth Century British History (June 2018).
> 
> I have imagined Jack serving with I ANZAC Corps with saw service at Third Ypres (Passchandaele) between September and November, 1917, losing some 38,000 casualties.
> 
> Variations on the Captain story turn up in many ex-service memoirs, to the extent that stories of this type are referenced by both Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) and Eric Leed in No Man's Land (1979). On soldier superstitions, see Owen Davies, The Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith During the First World War (2018). On fatalistic attitudes, see Jessica Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (2009). This is also the source for Jack's attitude to the influence of the war on his life in general.
> 
> Finally, Jack may profess lack of familiarity with psychoanalytic terminology, but he does appear here to be familiar with Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), in which he develops on the idea of the 'death drive', first proposed by Sabine Spielrein in 1912.


	2. Mama Doolay Promenade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack encounters Bert after the final scene of Murder in Montparnasse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a war story and the language used by the men involved reflects that. I have updated the warnings on this story to take into account the vulgarities.

The door clicked shut behind him, and stood for a moment on the porch, letting the night air cool his hot face. Good God! What had got into him? Blushing like a schoolboy over that picture - ! As he had said, he was a grown man, a married man, even. And he had certainly seen his fair share of naked female flesh, particularly during his assignment to Vice in the early years after he left the Academy. So why on earth was he finding this woman, this blasted, interfering, beautiful, desirable woman so unsettling? Idiot! What he needed was a stiff drink and some male company, he thought, heading off at a brisk pace to the one place he knew no woman would be allowed to enter, not even the enterprising and seductive Miss Fisher.

Mid-week and the RSSLIA was quiet, but George, the bar keep, was there as always, whistling as he polished the already sparkling glassware. George was always whistling or singing. The fact that he had lost his leg above the knee on the Somme and went about his work dot-and-carry-one on a prosthetic one never got him down.

‘State-of-the-art I am,’ he would say, thumping the metal with a grin, ‘this ‘ere’s one them new Desouter legs, first in Aus the doc says, best to be had. It’ll see me out, so why should I repine?’

Tonight he put down his cloth and, with a cheerful ‘Evening, Lieutenant!’ began drawing Jack a beer. George knew everyone’s poison as well as he did their military rank.

‘Evening, Sergeant. Quiet in here tonight.’

‘Yessir. Just you and Corporal Johnson over there.’ George nodded towards a dark corner where Jack now noticed a dark figure hunched gloomily over his drink.

‘Actually, would you mind having a word with him, sir? Something’s up with him, and I don’t like it.’

Jack sighed. That was all he needed to round off today. Bert Johnson drinking himself into a fighting rage over Dubois.

‘No, George, I don’t mind. I think I know what’s up. I’ll have a word.’ Taking his pint, Jack moved reluctantly over to Bert’s table.

‘Evening, Bert.’ He kept his voice neutral. Bert looked up at him blearily.

‘Well, if it isn’t the great inspector! Didn’t get your man, did you inspector? Had to leave it to the little woman to do that!’ The self-loathing in Bert’s voice hit Jack like a slap in the face. He breathed deeply, willing himself to remain calm.

‘He’s dead, Bert. He’s gone. There’s nothing more that I – or you – can do to him to make him pay for what he did to your mates.’

Bert glared at Jack, looking for a moment as if he might leap up and punch him in Dubois’s place. Jack tensed, preparing to catch a flying fist, or at least toss his beer in the man’s face to disconcert him in his rush. Then, suddenly, Bert slumped in his seat, all the fight gone out of him.

‘They were good mates, the best. God, but we had some laughs together, over the years – usually at you poncy officers.’

‘Don’t I know it!’ Jack relaxed slightly, putting his glass down on the table. If he could just keep Bert’s mind off his desire for vengeance, they just might make it to the end of the night without anyone else getting hurt. Distraction, that was the key. ‘Did I ever tell you the story of the cow in the ditch?’

Bert shook his head, apparently willing to be diverted. ‘Go on then. Pull up a pew and let’s hear it.’

* * *

It was Chalky White who started it. It would, of course, be Chalky, with Bates, tall and stolid behind him, the two inseparable since they had kept each other from dying of frostbite in a shell hole on the Somme last winter. It had been Chalky who, taking a ‘breather’ from the road mending the platoon were employed at (very desultorily, Jack thought sourly), had spotted the cow leaving the yard and yelled at the top of his strident voice, ‘Mama! Mama! Doolay promenade!’ The sound had brought the old woman bustling out of the yard and, barely sparing a glance at the cow, now well away down the partially mended road, straight over to Jack where she began gesticulating violently.

The old lady was furious for some reason, he thought. He couldn’t understand a word she said – even if his French was better, her patois was thick enough to drive a spade through – but he could tell that she was hopping mad as she stood, inches away from him, prodding up at his shoulder and screaming her imprecations.

He clutched vainly at a seemingly familiar word.

‘Votre vache, madame.’ That was right, wasn’t it, the polite plural form of address to one’s senior (and all civilians bar children) as laid out in his battered but seemingly useless copy of Useful Phrases for Soldiers Posted Overseas? ‘Your cow – il (no, surely that should be elle for a cow, shouldn’t it?) elle a - ’ he stopped, gaping. ‘Run away,’ he finished lamely.

The grins of the men, gladly pausing from work to lean on spades and pick-axes and watch the fun of their junior officer being haraunged by a woman more than twice his age and two-thirds of his height was more than he could bear. Oh, for god’s sake, this was ridiculous! He flung himself around and yelled ‘Get back to your work, you lazy lot!’

Most of them chuckled and turned away from his furiously burning face, but Chalky, having created the situation, clearly thought it his responsibility to stir the pot some more. Laying down his spade he came towards them, Bates at his heels, like a very large and loyal dog..

‘’Scuse me, sir,’ White was grinning but his voice was polite, with only a slight undercurrent of mockery, ‘Bates ‘ere thinks ‘e knows what she’s on about.’

‘Bates?!’ Jack looked in astonishment at the big man, generally thought by his superiors to be slow-witted, although Jack supposed it was really that he didn’t talk much, allowing Chalky to do all the talking for both of them. Bates nodded.

‘Yessir,’ he said in his slow, gentle voice, remarkably light in timbre for a man of his depth of chest. ‘’er cows run off and she wants us to get it back.’

Jack sighed. ‘Yes, I can see her cows run off, but it isn’t our responsibility. We have work to do. Surely she can get it back herself?’

Bates shook his head slowly. ‘She says it’s us wot let the cow out, leaving the gate open, so we’ve got to get it back. And she can’t do it ‘erself. There ain’t no one else on the farm save ‘er granddaughter, ‘oo’s seven and that simpleton, Pierre, ‘oo even the Frogs wouldn’t take for the army.’ Bates shrugged, an oddly Gallic gesture for such a seemingly stolid Anglo-Saxon.

‘And was it? Us who left the gate open, I mean?’ Jack quirked an eyebrow, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. He was pretty sure that Bates and White had been returning the granddaughter’s kittens which had strayed into the barn they were billeted in. Any lost animal inevitably made its way to Bates as a source of sanctuary and the big man had as soft a heart for broken-hearted children as for lost animals. ‘You do know that the farmyard was placed strictly off limits by the Major only yesterday?’

‘Yessir, no sir, we was only helping the kiddie out, sir.’ This was White, breaking in hurridly before his friend said too much, then realising he had given the game away. Jack allowed his mouth to relax into a half grin. 

‘That’s alright, White, I believe you. But I think we had better help this good lady with her cattle problem, don’t you? We don’t want to get on the wrong side of the local populace, now do we?’

‘No sir!’

‘Right you are, Bates, you had better find out where this wretched beast has got itself to.’

Bates turned to the old woman and spoke to her. Jack was pretty sure it wasn’t French as the author of Useful Phrases would understand it – he definitely caught something that sounded a lot like ‘drongo’ in there, although the context was lost on him – but the old lady seemed to understand as she nodded vigorously and pointed down the road. She even deigned to smile at Jack.

‘Why,’ he thought, ‘she looks just like old Elsie, the Fitzroy soak! Or rather,’ he corrected himself, ‘like Elsie will in about ten years’ time if she hasn’t laid off the booze by then.’ Not that this woman’s weather-beaten wrinkles were the result of booze – more like hard graft in the open air her entire life – but, like Elsie, she must have been a beauty once, before life and the war had aged her, bent her back and taken all her teeth. He smiled back at her, thinking fondly of his first collar, who had shown herself intelligent and compassionate, wise even, under that disguising cloak of alcohol. For a moment he was overcome with home-sickness for City South and its familiar crims, so much that tears pricked his eyes. Suddenly he realised White and Bates were watching him with compassion and humour as they awaited his orders. He must pull himself together – this would never do!

‘Right, lads, what are you waiting for? Hop it and get that rope and let’s get on with it! We don’t have all day to be sitting around with our thumbs up our arses, do we?’

They grinned at him. They knew he was a cop in civvie street, but it still amused them when their young officer resorted to some of their milder vulgarities. Then they hopped it.

An hour later they were still grinning, although this time they were grins of triumph, if rather muted triumph when seen through the layer of slurry that they were all now covered in. The cow, being an unusually stupid animal it appeared, had ended up in one of the ditches that yesterday’s working party had dug but failed to return to fill in. Jack still couldn’t work out how he had ended up in the ditch alongside White, attempting to both calm the panicking heifer and heave her out as Bates leant his weight against the rope fastened around her hindquarters. All three men were bruised as well as filthy, and the quartermaster was going to have a great deal to say about the damage to their uniforms. Jack wondered ruefully how he was going to replace his shirt, beyond saving by even a needlewoman as talented as Rosie, had she been there to assist. He would just have to cobble it together until his next leave, he supposed, or else put up with whatever abomination the quartermaster could lay his hands on. Either way, he would never hear the end of it in the mess until he replaced it properly.

They stood their panting slightly while the old woman, who had stood over them the whole time yelling incomprehensible instructions, drove her beast back up road and through a farm gate so battered that it hadn’t needed to be left open to let the animal out. He realised she hadn’t even said thank you, or at least not that he had understood, the ungrateful old witch. Oh, well, he thought ruefully, that would be a lot like old Elsie too, he supposed.

‘Come on, lads,’ he said resignedly, swinging his uniform jacket over one shoulder, ‘let’s get back to the unit and see if they’ve finished with that blasted bit of pavé.’ As he turned away, however, he heard the quick tap of clogs on the cobbles and, turning, saw the old woman hurrying back towards them, yelling and waving.

‘Now what?’ he thought resignedly. ‘Have we damaged her damn cow? Is she going to demand compensation?’ He did not relish the thought of taking this story to the major, although he knew the old man would take their side.

But, no. White and Bates were stopping, turning, smiling, and so was the old woman. She held out something to the men – a basket. Bates turned back the cloth that covered it and grinned. Jack caught a glimpse of what looked like a ham and a couple of wine bottles. If that was it, Bates and White would be the most popular men in billets, he thought.

The old woman was clearly thanking them, patting their arms and even reaching up to pinch Bates’s cheek. Jack chuckled to himself as he saw the big man blush. Then she turned to him.

‘Et vous, m’seuir l’officier, merci mille fois! Ça, c’est pour vous, pour la bonheur. Et’ she smiled at him, lifting her hand to gently touch his cheek, ‘les beaux yeux d’un gentil bon homme. Comme mon petit Matthieu … les yeux si beaux et le visage si gentille.’

He looked down at the object she had pressed into his palm and saw a brooch in the shape of a bird, inlaid with vibrant blue enamel. A bluebird, a bluebird of happiness. He hadn’t thought about happiness in a long time, he realised.

‘Mais, madame…’

‘Non, m’sieur,’ she cut him off with a shake of her head, closing his fingers firmly over the trinket. ‘Silence. C’est fini.’ Then, standing on tiptoe, she kissed him firmly on the cheek. And after that there was nothing he could say in reply.

* * *

Bert leaned back in his chair grinning, his temper forgotten. He took a pull on his drink, but reflectively now. 

‘That’s a good one, mate, but did I ever tell you the one about how Cec and I caught a pig?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title and inspiration for this chapter come from an amazing paper (sadly still unpublished) given by Franziska Heimburger at the 'Holiday from War' conference held in Paris a few years ago on the creation of a Franglais patois by British servicemen. The explanation of the specific phrase comes from Harvey Cushing, 'From a Surgeon's Journal, 1915-1918': 'When the Tommy shouts to the farmer’s wife: "Mama doolay promenade," she, understanding him perfectly, knows immediately that the cow has run away.' For more on the history of language and the war, see Julian Walker, 'Words and the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2017) and Christophe Declerq and Julian Walker, eds. 'Languages and the First World War' (Palgrave, 2016)
> 
> I've based the RSSILA club here on Royal British Legion clubs that existed in Britain at the time. I still need to do a lot more research into Australian repatriation and post-war support and advocacy, but I also needed a space for Jack and Bert to meet and swap yarns, so have taken some imaginative license here. The same applies to George's false leg. Metal Desouter limbs were, indeed, state of the art when introduced in Britain, and were standard issue to men with amputations by the British Ministry of Pensions. I don't know if the same applies to Australian ex-servicemen, however.
> 
> The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that I have given Jack a commission which is not in the canon. I have quite a lot of complex reasons for this, which are forming part of an article that I am currently writing, but there is real-life precedent, in the form of Lt, George Stanley McDowell, who enlisted as a Lance Corporal and whose story is told in his daughter's biography, 'Blessed With a Cheerful Nature (Winsome Paul McDowell, 2005).
> 
> White and Bates saving each other from frostbite in a shellhole is inspired by Joanna Bourke's 'Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War' (Reaktion, 1996).
> 
> I've based Jack's anxiety about his authority over older men under his command on the letters of B.A. Reader, who enlisted underage and was commanding men on the Western Front at the age of 18. (Papers of B A Reader, Imperial War Museums, 83/3/1) On the demography of the British armed forces, including the age and tragic mortality rates of junior officers on the Western Front, see J.M. Winter, 'The Great War and the British People' (Macmillan, 1985).
> 
> On the labour undertaken by British soldiers, see Gerard de Groot, 'Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War' (Longman, 1996), particularly chapter 8.
> 
> Handbooks such as 'Useful Phrases for Soldiers Posted Overseas' were in common circulation during the war. They were privately purchased rather than being standard issue by the military, so there are any number of different publications in various archives.
> 
> I can only apologise to any native French speakers for my abuse of their lovely language. While I can read French with reasonable fluency, my written and spoken communication are about on a level with Jack's.
> 
> Maurice Maeterlinck's play 'The Blue Bird' was published in 1908, toured in the US in 1910 and was turned into a film in 1918. I can't find any evidence of a pre-war production in Australia, so I've once again taken a bit of artistic license here and presumed that Jack somehow read or encountered the play before the war.
> 
> For Bert's pig story, see Frederick Manning's 'The Middle Parts of Fortune' (Peter Davies, 1929), arguably the best Anglophone novel of the war ever written.


	3. Stand in the Trench, Achilles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shortly after the scene described in chapter one, Jack's memory is prompted.

The parlour was very quiet, the only noise the crackling of the fire which warmed the room comfortably. Jack gazed at if for a moment, then moved to sit on the sofa, stretching his legs out with a sigh. It had been a long day, and Miss Fisher’s phone call, inviting him to stop by for a nightcap and a game of draughts after his shift finished had been welcome, although she herself had yet to appear. From upstairs came soft, feminine sounds, the murmur of Dot’s voice, the sound of running water. It sounded as Miss Fisher might be some time.

Jack sighed and closed his eyes for a minute, jerking awake suddenly only moments before he fell fully asleep. This would never do! If he was going to have any chance at taking on Miss Fisher at draughts he would need to all his wits about him. He sat up, looking for a distraction to keep his mind alert and spotted the book on the small end table next to him. Picking it up, he examined the spine, his eyebrows raising in interest and curiosity. 

_The Illiad_ , he read. He hadn’t put Miss Fisher down as a classicist, but then, why he should be surprised at any of the knowledge or curiosity she displayed, he didn’t know. Greek had never been his forte during his years at grammar school, now distant enough that he suspected he had forgotten all he knew, although he remembered the history well enough. Opening the volume, he was relieved to see that it was a translation, by one C. W. Bateman, whoever he was. Gently, he turned the leaves until he came to the opening lines:

Goddess, sing the destroying wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son, which brought woes unnumbered on the Achæans

Wrath, he thought, destroying wrath, as his mind went back to a baking day on a hillside overlooking the land that had been Troy.

* * *

It was, he thought, the worst bombardment yet. The noise from the heavy artillery on the ridge was endless, relentless. He wasn’t even sure if he was hearing it, or only feeling it, a deep shaking in his bones and guts. Yet even through the deep, aching below he could hear the scream of high explosives, the pitiless whine of the red-hot shrapnel. Was he shaking? Or was the ground shaking? He couldn’t tell and more.

He looked down the trench where the men were cowering. His face must be as contorted and ashen and theirs, he realised. There was O’Shea, eyes squeezed tight shut, his lips moving, his hands restlessly telling an invisible rosary. Lindsey looked as if he were going to be sick, and little Simpkins had pissed himself, poor kid. Jack wondered if anyone else had noticed – he doubted they would say anything, even if they had. It so easily could have been any of them, himself included. Still could be, he thought, as a charge dropped just shy of the parapet, showering them with dirt and sand. Dear God, if Johnny Turk had his eye in, he would have their range in a minute and the next one would drop right on them, nothing they could do about it!

Jack turned his head the other way, trying to distract himself, and met Davy’s eye. Davy’s skin was the colour of putty and he was clutching the pit prop next to him as if it were the only solid thing on earth, the only thing keeping him from curling up in a ball on the duckboards. ‘I know how he feels,’ Jack thought wryly. He wished he could say something, make some quip about it being quite the adventure they were having, but Davy would never hear him above this racket, even if he were in a fit state to understand the joke. Beyond him, he caught sight of that Pommie liaison officer. Poor bastard, he must have come over with a message for the Colonel and got caught in this mess before he could get back. Through the dust, Jack tried to make out what he was doing – he couldn’t be writing, could he? Not in all this… Jack rubbed his eyes, but that only ground the perpetual dust and sand further in, making them water.

Then, all of a sudden, the guns stopped. For a breath, no more, there fell a silence as loud as the guns had been a moment before. And then the horse screamed. The sound tore through them all like a blade, a high, inhuman noise of pain and fear and suffering. Jack felt his guts contract, thought ‘Dear God, I’m going to be sick’ and turned to retch. But before he could do so, Davy moved, leaping to his feet and using the pit prop to haul himself up so that his head and shoulders showed above the parapet. He had grabbed his rifle as he went, bayonet and all, and he waved it aloft.

‘You haven’t killed us yet, you bastards!’ His voice bellowed out across the stillness, drowning even the memory of the now silent horse’s scream. ‘And we’re not going to bloody die! Not without taking you horse-murdering fuckers with us! D’you hear me? We’re still here and we’re not going to die without a fight!’

Jack had never seen anything like it, anything so magnificent and mad. Davy’s broad shoulders seemed to fill the sky; the dust shook from his hair in his passion and the rising sun, catching the short blond locks, turned them to golden flame. For a heartbeat Jack could do nothing but stare, his mouth agape, as Davy’s defiance and invective rolled on. Then a bullet whipped past with a tiny shriek, whisking Jack’s hat from his head and burying itself in the far side of the trench. 

Dear God, snipers! Jack moved before he had time to think, grabbing Davy by the knees and belt and dragging him back and down into the trench with a strength he had not known he possessed. Davy, loosing his grip on the pit prop and losing his footing as Jack knocked his feet from under him, fell and rolled over on the duckboards, grabbing at Jack as he did so. Jack found himself on the ground as well, clutched tightly to Davy’s chest, breathing in the scent of fear and perspiration, at once achingly familiar and profoundly strange. The skin of Davy’s neck was soft on his cheek, the leather of his belt smooth beneath his fingers. Jack felt his cheek wet with tears, his lungs shaking with uncontrollable laughter. They rolled together on the ground, laughing and crying and trying speak until, at last, the effort, any effort, was too much and they limp, their arms draped loosely around each other. The sun, now fully risen was blotted out by the silhouetted faces of men who had come running to see if their mates were still alive.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Lindsey’s whisper was respectful and devout. ‘And not a scratch on ‘em, the mad bastards!’

* * *

‘Jack? Jack! Are you there? Goodness, you were miles away!’

Jack looked around to see Phryne standing in the doorway, armed elegantly draped to show her figure off to its best advantage. He smiled his appreciation.

‘Yes, Miss Fisher, I’m afraid I was. Troyland, in fact.’  
She caught his meaning immediately, her eyes darting to the book in his hand, then to his face as she cocked an enquiring eyebrow.

‘Gallipoli? In that case, shall I send Mr Butler for some beer?’

‘A whisky will do very well, thank you, Miss Fisher, but I thought we were having a game of draughts?’

‘I haven’t even got the set out yet, and this sounds much more diverting, if you are in the mood to discuss it.’ She moved across to the Tantalus, pouring out two stiff measures, before turning and handing him one.

He smiled again, this time in gratitude at the gentle question in his voice.

‘Of course, Miss Fisher, since you ask.’ And, cradling the cut-glass tumbler in his hand, he leant back on the sofa cushions and began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title (and overall inspiration) comes from Patrick Shaw-Stewart's 1915 poem, 'I Saw a Man This Morning'. It is also the title of Elizabeth Vandiver's 2010 history of the use of classics by First World War writers, particularly poets, which discusses the importance of Gallipoli as the site of ancient Troy for many during the war.
> 
> C. W. Bateman's translation of _The Iliad_ was published in 1895 by J. Cornish. I have no particular reason for choosing this translation among several others published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, other than the language felt the best fit here.
> 
> In my mind, Jack comes from a lower-middle class Richmond family, as described by Janet McCalman in her classic social history of the suburb, _Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond, 1900-1965_ (1984). A grammar school education would have been plausible for a bright boy from this background.
> 
> The battle descriptions are an amalgam taken from the memoirs, letters, diaries and war novels I have read over the years. I have also been influenced by quotations used by Joanna Bourke in _An Intimate History of Killing_
> 
> With a bit of luck, my refresher course in HTML has worked and I will be able to use proper emphasis from here on in.


	4. Language Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne learns a bit more about Jack. Set some unspecified time after Murder and Mozzarella.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by Scratch_Pad's fascinating bit of research into the history of the Victorian police at war (https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486885/chapters/43243976#workskin). I have my own theory as to when and where Jack learned German, as you will see.

The papers were neatly stacked on Jack’s desk. This in itself was no surprise. His desk was always a model of neatness, even at the height of a busy case. The newsprint was, therefore piled tidily and squared away on one corner. Nonetheless they were, Phyrne noted, clearly well-thumbed and, she discovered on closer inspection, all turned to a page with the same article title, clearly a story that was being run over several days that Jack was following. What was most surprising, however was that they were in German.

Intrigued, Phryne bent over the desk to take a closer look. ‘Im Westen Nichts Neues’ she thought it said. She wished her German was better, but she always had struggled reading the elaborate Gothic script. Honestly, look at that masthead! She couldn’t even decipher the name of the paper, although the date was clear enough, starting in with the tenth of November. She turned back to the story itself, wondering what on earth it could be about, noting now the pencilled notes in the margin relating to vocabulary and grammar. Aha, maybe this was part of a German lesson, then. She did know that he was studying the language, having long ago spotted the small collection of Rilke and Schiller that nestled alongside his three-volume set of the complete works of Shakespeare. She had always assumed his interest ran to classical literature, however, not current affairs.

‘Can I help you, Miss Fisher?’

She was so absorbed that she had, for once, not heard him come in.

‘Jack!’ Recovering quickly she smiled up at him. ‘I was just examining the evidence of your latest interest.’

He glanced over her shoulder and smiled easily. ‘Ah, yes. And what do you make of it?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid. German was never my strong suit. Am I to take it that there is a new case with a German angle? Should I start taking German lessons to keep up?’

‘Ah, well, no…’, he coughed and a rather shy look came over his face. Was he embarrassed? That wasn’t like Jack. Even when the innuendo was far riskier than this, he usually managed to keep pace with her. 

‘Actually, Miss Fisher, since you are here, there is someone I would like you to meet, if you would care to accompany me. I was just on my way to see her, as it happens, and stopped by to pick up a few things.’ He gestured at the papers.

‘An old friend, Jack?’ Phryne smiled, but felt a little startled. It had only been a few months ago that Jack had appeared to be involved with that lovely, sad Italian woman, Concetta, and he had certainly never struck her as the type to trifle with two women’s affections at the same time. (Her own affections, she told herself firmly, didn’t come into it. No man, not even Jack, trifled with those!)

‘Well, yes, in a way. At least, I have known her since the war.’ Jack smiled as he collected the newspapers and a small blue book whose title was obscure and led the way out of the station. ‘She’s all set up in a little house out in Richmond, so I’m afraid we will have to take a tram. I can’t justify the use of an official vehicle for this, unless you brought your car?’

Phryne shook her head, amused at his rectitude in this. How like Jack, she thought, to refuse to use a police car for a personal matter. Although how unlike him to be engaging in such personal matters, apparently in working hours and, of all things, inviting her along. Clearly he was more broad minded than she gave him credit for!

* * *

The long, hot tram ride deposited them eventually in one of the more salubrious streets in Richmond, although the factories down by the river still left a slight tang in the air. Throughout, Jack had maintained his normal reticence, responding only with slight smiles and a calm ‘Just wait and see, Miss Fisher’ to her persistent questions. As they alighted, however, he became visibly more nervous.

‘I should perhaps explain, this is – ahem – a bit of an extravagance, at least on my part. But you will understand – I know not everyone would…’

His voice trailed off, and Phryne smiled inwardly to herself. Men were so transparent! Hadn’t these things always been a bit of an extravagance, she thought. She really must teach the good Inspector some French, if only so she could introduce him to _Manon Lescaut _. Although keeping a woman, even (or especially, perhaps) in the suburban respectability of Richmond’s hilltop, was not perhaps in character. And when, she wondered, did he see this woman, given the many evening he had spent in her parlour? Daytime trysts seemed most unlikely, and if he wasn’t getting anything in return for his outlay, it would be an extravagance indeed. And why, now she came to think of it, did he need to bring a large pile of newspapers when visiting?__

____

__

Lost in such speculation, Phryne failed to listen to whatever explanation Jack was making as they turned up the path of a neat little bungalow with an almost militantly tidy front garden, the picture of decorum and rectitude. The sight of the lady who answered the door was, therefore, even more of a surprise than she might otherwise have been. Tiny, white-haired and dressed in a black silk of both the utmost propriety and at least a generation earlier, she was certainly nothing like the sultry Concetta nor the kept woman of Phyrne’s imagination.

‘Herr Robinson!’ The lady’s reed-like voice, suitable for one of her size, was strongly accented. German, Phryne thought, although as different from the stout hausfrau of popular fiction as one could imagine. And then the penny dropped. Of course, his German teacher, alluded to so briefly, but otherwise never mentioned. She smiled briefly, recalling her own German teacher on that trip to wild west. But why then the shyness about introducing her?

‘Komm, komm.’ The little old lady gestured them into the house. ‘And this lady is?’ 

‘Frau Tietzel, may I introduce Miss Fisher. Miss Fisher, Frau Tietzel.’

‘Delighted’ Phryne held out her hand.

‘Ah, Fischer, a good German name.’ Frau Tietzel clasped Phryne’s hand in both her dry, papery ones.

‘No, English in origin, I’m afraid, no C.’

‘Ah, well, it is no matter. And how have you been getting on with your homework, Inspector?’

‘Quite well, I think. Although some of the colloquialisms are a bit beyond me, I’m afraid.’

‘You teach Jack German?’ Phryne’s curiosity got the better of her as Frau Tietzel led them into her immaculate sitting room, where tea was laid out.

‘Ja, for five years now. He is an excellent student, one of my best. And certainly one of the most generous.’

‘Nonsense, Frau Tietzel!’ Was Jack actually blushing?

‘He sends all his friends to me, won’t let them come to anyone else. So I have no need of those expensive newspaper advertisement that you see all over.’

‘I know the one you mean!’ Phryne exclaimed. ‘You get them in book wrappers as well. “Learn to speak German like a native” – or French or Portuguese or whatever. I thought they were aimed at harried parents looking for tuition for their little darlings.’

‘Nein, nein,’ Frau Tietzel shook her head as she poured the tea and past around a plate of delicate almond biscuits which Jack promptly took full possession of. ‘It is the old soldiers, the men who fought who want to learn what it was like on the other side.’ She smiled at Jack.

‘Not so very different from what it was like on our side, if Herr Remarque is to be believed,’ he smiled back at her.

‘Ah, you understood that much, good.’ She turned to Phryne. ‘Not many of my students are able to read such things, but Herr Robinson, he has the ear for it. So him I give this new story from my country…’

She trailed off and Phryne looked quizzically at Jack.

‘Frau Tietzel came to Australia ten years ago, just after the war,’ he explained gently. ‘Her son died at Ypres in 1914 and her husband died of ‘flu in 1919. A cousin sent her the fare to Australia, but she – the cousin, I mean – caught TB not long after and died in the sanatorium in 1923. I met Frau Tietzel when she was being evicted from her rooms for lack of payment.’ He glanced quickly at the old woman as he made these revelations. Her face was flushed, but her voice was steady as she took up the tale.

‘So good to me he was. Gave me money to cover the rent and started coming for lessons. It was all I could do – I was too old for factory work and not strong enough to scrub floors or take in laundry. But without advertising, the students didn’t come. Until Herr Robinson came.’ She smiled at him, her cheeks wet with tears, and now it was his turn to flush as the full scale of his generosity was laid bare. ‘So like my Peter, he is, or the man my Peter would have been, had he lived that long. And he knew about where Peter had died – later but he recognized the place where Peter is buried, so I can talk about it with him, even so far away.’

‘We passed it in ’18, during the advance. It is a lovely spot, very peaceful. I think,’ he smiled a little, ‘that Paul Baumer must be buried somewhere similar.’  
‘Ach, so you have reached the end, then. What think you?’ 

‘It is –‘ he paused. ‘There was so much that was familiar, but strange as well. I will need to go over it again, I think, with some explanation of the language?’

Phyrne smiled inwardly as the careful, considerate Jack reasserted himself. Rising she said, ‘I should leave you. You have a lesson to be getting on with.’

Jack rose as well. ‘No, no, I just came to return Frau Tietzel’s papers. I should be getting back to the station. I will see you on Saturday morning, Frau Tietzel?’

‘Am Samtag, Herr Robinson, and don’t forget your vocabulary list again!’

‘I won’t!’

Out in the sunshine, Phryne took his arm and glanced at his profile, shaded as always by his fedora.

‘Well, well, Jack Robinson, full of mysteries for me to uncover as usual.’

‘We aim to please, Miss Fisher, we aim to please.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The basis for this chapter is a paper given by Ann-Marie Einhaus at the 2019 International Society for First World War Studies Conference in Leeds on 'Reviewing for Peace: Veterans reviewing international (war) literature, 1919–1933' in which she pointed to the huge popularity of language classes among veterans after the war.
> 
> Spot the Dorothy L Sayers references!
> 
> Remarque's _Im Westen Nichts Neues _( _All Quiet on the Western Front _) was first published as a serial in the _Vossische Zietung _between 10 November and 9 December, 1928. It would go on to become an international bestseller across the world (including in Australia) the following year. Do Google the magazine to see why Phyrne had so much difficulty reading the masthead...______
> 
> _  
> _  
> _  
> _  
> _  
> _I have based Frau Tietzel's son on Peter Kollwitz, the son of the artist Käthe. He was killed at Ypres in 1914, aged 18, and buried at Vladslo war cemetary. In the 1930s, a pair of sculpture, Die Eltern (The Parents), were installed in the cemetery, the culmination of as series of sketches and drawings Kollwitz had done throughout the '20s as she struggled to come to terms with her grief. The figure of the father gazes at the plaque bearing Peter Kollwitz's name. It is one of the most moving war memorials ever created._  
>  _  
>  _  
>  _  
>  _  
>  _


	5. Under the Arc of the Guns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne keeps asking questions. A follow-on from Chapter 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains descriptions of battle and violent death.

‘Davy – he was your best friend?’

Jack sighed, leaning back against the cushions. ‘That’s right. Our mothers were best friends; we grew up together. He was reading for his articles with a local solicitor when we enlisted.’

‘And you said,’ Phryne hesitated for a moment, ‘you said you were with him when he died?’

Jack nodded, not quite trusting his voice.

‘Tell me?’ Her voice was light, inviting, but her smile was more tentative than usual.

He glanced at the clock. It was late, and he was tired. But looking at her, he suddenly realised that he wanted to tell her about Davy. He looked down at his glass, which was empty.

‘Alright.’ His voice sounded hoarse. ‘But I think I will need another drink.’

‘Of course.’ She rose fluidly, taking the tumbler and refilling it along with her own, and handing it back with a solemn face.

* * *

It wasn’t quite pitch black, Jack realised, not anymore. It had been when Arthington had shaken him awake an hour ago. He had shaved as carefully as he could in the flickering candlelight of the dugout, the water, dipped from a shell hole he suspected, icy and the razor dull. Then he made his way carefully along the trenches, trying not to stumble over boots or kick over Tommy cookers heating billycans of tea. Not that there were many of them; none of the men seemed particularly hungry, but he followed Sergeant Tench as he handed out the rum ration, making sure that everyone drank his share, even little Lewis, who was only 19 and looked as if he were about to throw the harsh liquor up again the moment he swallowed.

Now, with three minutes to go before the whistle, Jack could see the sky starting to lighten. The rough wood of the trench ladder was taking on a more solid shape, as were the dark blobs that were the men dotted along the length of the trench. He could start to put names to them, individual heights and stances as familiar and recognisable in the growing half light as any facial features in daylight. Bates, long and gangly, hunching slightly in case his helmet should show over the parapet; Chalky White at his shoulder as always, although he barely came that high. That silhouette with the hiccups was Lewis – the ears sticking out from under his helmet unmistakable, as was Jackson, in his uniform worn like a bundle of rags. And there, just a bit further on, at the foot of his own set of steps stood Davy, straight as an arrow, his classical profile etched like an intaglio jewel on the darker trench wall behind him. He must have felt Jack’s glance because he turned towards him. It was still too dark to see his face, but he gave a quick nod, before glancing at his wrist. 

Jack looked down at his own. 30 seconds to go. He licked his lips before placing the whistle to them. 

* * *

The order had been to walk at a steady pace towards the German trenches.

‘The artillery should have cut the wire.’ Jack knew by his Colonel’s ironic emphasis and the twist of his grimace beneath the bristling moustache that he was not convince. Thankfully, the Major had read the same message in their superior’s tone and face, so the order had gone around for the men to crawl when they emerged from the trenches.

Zero hour. The whistles had shrieked; boots thudded against wooden ladders, rifle butts rattled. The first wave went, then the second. Lewis slipped, missed his footing, cursed and scrambled up and over the parapet. Maybe the shock had cured his hiccups. Jack, having seen his men went up with the final wave.

For the first ten yards, there was silence. All he could hear was his own heavy breathing as he laboured on elbows and knees across the broken ground. Then, taking courage from the quiet, he slowly raised himself to standing and began to walk carefully forward, skirting to avoid the water-filled shell holes. Around him, men were doing likewise, dark smudges in the growing light rising up like warriors grown from dragon’s teeth. Ahead of him, Jack thought he could see the first wave, which must have reached the first German trenches, as the dots halted, clumped together. What were they doing? Why weren’t they advancing? Oh, shit, the wire hadn’t been cut after all! They were having to cut it to get through!

And then the machine-gun fire began. 

Jack watched helplessly as the dots he know to be his men began to fall, curling up like small animals and disappearing down into the mud, bar the few who fell into the barbed wire and hung there suspended by their caught clothing. He felt surprised by how peaceful they seemed – no screaming or thrashing about, just the almost gently collapse in on themselves. For long moments, he hung himself suspended unmoving in time. Then a bullet whipped passed his ear and he dived instinctively for the nearest shell hole, slithering down its side, unable to stop himself until he reached the bottom. Thank God, he thought, it wasn’t filled with water, although he was now thoroughly caked in mud.

Taking a breath he did a careful inventory of his limbs and torso. No, no wounds that he could discern, despite his all-fire stupidity in standing out there like a sitting duck. He’d have to get out of here, of course, make his way forward, and help guide the men back. The artillery had started up again, on both sides. Please God their guns had managed to take out that fucking machine gun!

It took him far longer to claw his way up the far side of the hole than it had to slither down it. The pearly dawn sky was now alight with explosions. Staying low, Jack made his way forward as quickly as he dared.

The first group he encountered was Chalky White, attempting to support Bates who leaned heavily on him with some sort of wound to his side. Lewis followed behind, his arm bound in a sling made out of one of his own puttees, then a pair half carrying, half dragging a man who seemed to have broken his leg.

‘Cobbold’s gone sir, and Hampton,’ White gasped as they came abreast, ‘The Sergeant’s up ahead, with Lieutenant Waters. They’re trying to get the machine gun nest. They didn’t cut the fucking wire!’ White’s voice rose high and hysterical, and Jack saw there were tears in his eyes. 

‘Right you are, White,’ he said quickly and as calmly as he could. ‘You get these men back to the aid post. You know where it is? Good man; I’m relying on you.’

The words seemed to steady the man as he nodded and even attempted a salute.

‘Right, quick as you like, White. I’ll see you back at call-over.’

The bedraggled little party set off again, pausing every now and then as it toiled along to crouch down as another shell whizzed overhead. Jack didn’t stay to watch; he turned and ran in the direction where White had gestured, towards where he knew Davy would be.

* * *

It was over by the time he got to them, the little group huddled in a small scrape just feet from the barbed wire entanglement. He had passed the bodies of Hampton and Cobbold along the way, along with others, some who he could put names to, others so caked in dirt or destroyed by shot that it was impossible to identify them. For a moment he thought that the group he was seeking were all dead as well. The sergeant certainly was, his big body slumped on the wire which held him up where he had been attempting to cut through it when the machine gun bullets had sliced through him instead. But Davy and Corporal Timpson were still alive, although Timpson’s breath bubbled with blood and Davy’s skin was the colour of putty under the mud. 

Jack assessed the situation rapidly. There was nothing he could do for Timpson. He was too far gone. Davy was another matter, although the wound to his stomach didn’t look good. The field dressing he had managed to apply to the wound was soaked. Jack fumbled in his pocket for his own, cursing under his breath as his numb fingers fumbled with the canvas packaging and smeared the cotton pad it contained with dirt. In his head he could hear the camp MO’s lecture at Mena. ‘Never let your first field dressing get dirty. It must remain aseptic at all times.’ Even in the Egyptian dust it had seemed a ridiculous instruction; now Jack found himself giving an internal hollow laugh.

‘Up you come, old man. We’ll soon have you tidied up, then we’ll get you back to the aid post.’

Davy shook his head very slightly. ‘No good – Won’t make it – Gunners still there – Will get us if we move – You go – Have a chance –‘

‘Don’t talk.’ Jack tied the cotton bandage around the new dressing as tightly as he could. ‘We’ll wait until dark if we have to. I’m not leaving you here.’

In the end, they did have to wait out the long day under the pitiless sun. Davy had been right in his assessment of the situation. Every time Jack raised his head above the lip of their shallow hole to scope the situation he was met with a burst of gunfire, causing him to drop down again hurriedly. As the day grew hotter, Davy became more restless, muttering about Melbourne and, on several occasions crying out for his mother. For a while Jack answered him, recalling the long summer days when they had set out on their bikes with nothing but a picnic, their fishing rods and a lust for adventure. But as Davy grew more delirious, his words more disjointed, Jack fell silent.

His hunger and thirst grew as the hours crept by, the time marked agonizingly by the slow ticking of his watch. He tried to doze, to conserve his strength, to block out Davy’s hoarse voice and the pangs of hunger. He dreamed of Rosie’s baking, hot pies and luscious, chewy biscuits, of rich stews, of fruit plucked fresh from the tree.

At last the sun sank to the horizon, leaving the world in blue dusk. Jack knew there was still a risk that they would be seen by the machine gunners, but he was going to need some light to see his way by if they were to have any chance of making it. Davy was silent except for rasping, laboured breaths. Slowly Jack raised his head – nothing. Gently he shook Davy awake.

‘Come on, old man. It’s now or never.’ He stood up slowly, hauling Davy’s inert form over his back. Still no sound from the machine gun nest. Maybe it had been abandoned. Well, there was nothing else he could do about that now. Slowly, bent under Davy’s weight, Jack turned his back on the unseen enemy and set off back across No Man’s Land.

The journey into the ever-deepening darkness was little short of a nightmare, his back aching, his mouth sour and dry, his feet slipping on the churned-up crumbs of dirt. Afterwards, he could never piece together a coherent narrative of how he managed it. It fractured into dislocated sensations of pain and exhaustion, shot through by the flash of the flares that started to go up. But somehow, miraculously, they made it, Davy’s breath still raucous in his ear, the talisman that he was still alive. Faceless hands grasped them as they came to the parrados, helping them over. Bodiless voices called for stretcher bearers, urged Jack to release Davy, to let the bearers take him to the RAP, so get some rest. Jack just shook his head, saying nothing but refusing to let go, until he was steered down the trench to the dugout where there MO and his orderly were too busy applying dressings to do more than nod Jack towards an empty stretcher. Carefully, he laid Davy down on it, then turned, stumbled, tripped, fell into blackness and knew no more.

He came to in the dark, the air stuffy and heavy with the sound of men groaning and swearing. Carefully he pushed himself up, leaning his back against the rough earth wall and peering about in the dim flicker of an oil lamp to try to make out where he was. The aid post, he now realised, was full with prostrate bodies and hunched figures in pairs carrying their burdens in and out. On the far side of what he supposed he should call a room a single figure moved, stooped, paused, rose and moved on again – the medical officer, assessing each patient. 

‘Here, drink this.’ A hand fell on his shoulder and he turned, looking into large gentle brown eyes as a battered tin mug was pushed into his hand. He grasped the cup and drank automatically. Tea, tooth-achingly sweet but blessedly hot. The eyes assessed him kindly.

‘Better, lad?’

A soft, unfamiliar accent, the vowels drawn out. And the face wasn’t much older than his, in spite of the ‘lad’ and a ridiculous brush of a moustache that clearly hadn’t been trimmed since its owner had been in the line.

Jack nodded, unable to speak.

‘You brought yon lad ower there in, didn’t you?’ The orderly nodded towards a stretcher by the dugout entrance. The body that lay on it was covered to the neck by a sheet, but peering through gloom, Jack saw that it was Davy, lying still, apparently asleep. As he watched, two bearers approached and stopped at either end; the man at the head reached for the blanket, pulling in gently over Davy’s face.

He turned, reaching to grab at the sleeve of the orderly who was turning away to hand a mug to the next man. Hot tea slopped over his fingers and dripped on to his trouser leg.

‘Wait – what are they doing? They – he – ‘

‘Eeh, I’m sorry, lad. Theer takin’ ‘im out. Nowt doctor could do for ‘im at the last. Eh, but ye did good, lad, bringing ‘im ‘ere. ‘Twere a kind thing t’do; God’s work, I’d say. Now, ye sit theer and drink tha tea. It’ll put ‘art in ye and then ye can head down dressing station when the next batch o’ walking wounded go.’

He laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder again, but Jack shook it off as he rose. His legs felt like rubber under him, but he ignored their complaint and those of the prostrate men he stumbled over as he pushed his way to the dugout entrance and out in to the clear, cold night. There he stopped. The bearers with Davy’s body had gone. Looking along the trench in both directions he couldn’t see them, so he looked up instead. Far above his head the stars winked in the velvet blackness. They were so different from the stars over Melbourne, he thought, so cold and so far away. And getting further away. He had never felt so far from home, from those he loved. If only he could telescope time and space, could be a telescope… He shook his head and gave a bark of bitter laughter. Dear God, he really was losing it! This was how it ended, then, not in a blaze of glory for either of them but a silent slipping away amidst the pain of others and a descent into insanity. No, dammit! He turned his face up to the sky again, breathing in deeply, willing the stars to resume their proper place in his perspective even as they shimmered and swam in the tears that pricked his eyes. He would make it home, in one piece, body and mind. He owed Davy that much.

* * *

There was silence for a minute after Jack finished speaking.

‘He sounds like a good man.’ Phryne’s voice was soft, no hint of the mockery that marked so many of their exchanges.

‘He was. The best.’ He sighed. ‘Sometimes I think it should have been me out there, with Sergeant Davies. He would have made so much more of his life after the war.’

‘You can’t know that. And you have made a great deal of your life.’

‘A failed marriage? A stalled career? Davy would have been a circuit judge by now, at the very least.’

‘Jack, that is nonsense and you know it. In the time I have known you, you have done more to change people’s lives than anyone I know. You have done what you set out to do, make Melbourne safer and, in the process, saved dozens of lives –‘, then softly, ‘not least my own.’

He looked at her for a long moment, then gave a half smile. ‘I only said I sometimes think that. But I miss him, every day. If I have ever saved anyone, it is because he deserved not to have his sacrifice be in vain.’

She shook her head slightly, looking as if she wanted to say something more, but changed her mind.

‘To Davy,’ she said, raising her half-full glass.

‘To Davy,’ he replied, and drained his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter comes from E A Macintosh's poem _In Memoriam_ : 'You were only David's father,/ but I had fifty sons/ When we went up in the evening/ Under the arc of the guns./ And we came back in the twilight -/ Oh, God! I can hear them call/ To me for help and pity, who could not help at all.' (1917)
> 
> There is a long tradition of characters named David in First World War novels and semi-fictional memoirs. I have followed in this tradition.
> 
> The detail about shaving with water from a shell hole comes from G. V. Dennis's unpublished post war memoir 'A Kitchener Man's Bit (1916-1918)', written in 1928 (Imperial War Museums, London, Documents.6926)
> 
> On the issuing of rum to men before action, see Simon Harold Walker, _War Bodies: Physical Control, Transformation and Damage in the First World War_ (Bloomsbury, 2020).
> 
> The artillery notoriously failed to cut the barbed wire of the German trenches on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. This engagement isn't set specifically on that day, but I have lifted that detail, as well as the order for men to walk towards the enemy. Some units did this, but many units crawled or positioned themselves in No Man's Land before the signal to advance was given.
> 
> The description of the battle - the silence and the men curling up as they died - come from a letter from Lt. R. Macgregor to his father dated July 1916. (Imperial War Museums, London, Documents.13511)
> 
> On the significance of the first field dressing, and the other medical details in this chapter, see Jessica Meyer, _An Equal Burden: The Men of the Royal Army Medical Corps_ , Oxford University Press, 2019, Chapter 3.
> 
> Abdominal wounds had some of the highest fatality rates of any category of wounds. Moving men with such wounds was incredibly dangerous, as was giving them anything to eat or drink. Most didn't make it beyond the Casualty Clearing Station, between six and twelve miles behind the line, if they made it that far.
> 
> RAP = Regimental Aid Post, the most forward medical aid point, located in or just behind the front line and staffed by the regimental medical officer (MO or RMO) and his orderly, a non-commissioned officer with the Royal Army Medical Corps. I have based the orderly that Jack encounters on Frank Ridsdale, whose papers are held in the Liddle Collection, Special Collections, University of Leeds. I have taken some liberties, in that Ridsdale served as an orderly with a field ambulance, manning advanced and main dressing stations, rather than aid posts.
> 
> Sorry about the delay in posting this. This chapter proved harder to write than I had anticipated.


	6. Letters of Rosie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three letters from Rosie to Jack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been reading a lot about the Australian conscription debates and 1917 Melbourne food demonstrations these past few weeks. This is the result.

Melbourne

April 1916

Dearest Jack,

It was such an age since I last heard from you that I had quite convinced myself that one of your letters must have gone down with the _Springwell_. After your postcard telling me of your safe arrival back in Egypt, I had been looking for a longer letter. But then today I got your last with its news of your move to England! It does sound cold on Salisbury Plain, especially if you are ‘under canvass’, but I can’t help but envy you just a bit, my love, seeing all those new sites. Thank you for the photograph of Stonehenge. I have put it with the one you sent of the Pyramids. I think I like this one better, the stones seem more human somehow. And the photograph is clearer, so I can see your face. You look well, if awfully thin. I will start at once on a new pair of thick woollen socks against the cold, and send them with a fruit cake which Astrid promises to show me how to make. I hope they will arrive in time before you leave for the front.

You ask for all our news. We keep busy and cheerful. I go to Red Cross meetings nearly every day, and we are doing such good work providing ‘comforts’ for you boys overseas. Mrs Stanley organises all of us to within an inch of our lives (I think she must sit on every committee in the city!) but she is a dear, really, although Lavvie says she frightens her. She doesn’t frighten me, even if she does say ‘Humph!’ in the gruffest manner imaginable! We’ve been packing books to send to the hospitals in Alexandria this week, and making miles and miles of cotton bandage, but I’m going to propose that we turn our attention to knitting socks and vests and woollen hoods now that we know you are in Europe.

Mother worries dreadfully about the shopping. She says the rise in the cost of food is something scandalous! At least my moving back in with her and Father and shutting up our dear little house has meant that I can contribute my mite to the budget. I know it isn’t much, but the allowance you give me is very much appreciated.

The other thing Mother worries about (and so do I) is Father. He is working so hard, what with all the men of the force who have gone overseas, and now all this talk of conscription is making things worse. The police have so much to do with the constant trade union trouble, particularly down by the docks. How will they cope if they come and take the young men left on the force? It will ruin Father’s health, although the work and worry it will cause. And I know it is silly, but somehow it feels that the sacrifice _you_ made by volunteering will be less if they have to _make_ others go.

Father says that it is our duty to do everything we can to support Britain and the war effort. The Commissioner has sent round a circular urging all men of the right age to enlist but that he will support conscription if not enough do, and the bishop gave a sermon in favour of the move the other day, which was printed in all the papers. I’m enclosing the cutting. What do you think, Jack? I don’t know what to think!

Mother is calling me for lunch, so I must go now. She and Father and Lavvie all send their best loves and I, of course, send all of mine.

Your loving wife, Rosie.

* * *

Melbourne

October 1916

Dearest Jack,

Have you seen the news? I don’t know if this will reach you before the papers do – but the vote has been declared and there will be no conscription! I am so glad. Your wonderful letter made it all so clear to me, darling. As you said, you went freely to fight to keep our land free, and that would all be for nothing if men’s right to choose whether or not to follow you was taken away. You explained it all so beautifully that I was able to explain it Mother and Father. (I couldn’t give them your letter to read, could I, my darling, not with what you wrote in those last few pages? It was wonderful, and I dreamt of you in that special way after I had read them, but they were a little indiscrete! Mother did ask to read the letter because she knew it had come and I hardly knew where to look when I said I didn’t want her to. I don’t know if she believed me when I said that you had written about the last time you at the front, and how I know she doesn’t like reading such gruesome stories. She did give me an odd look.) I couldn’t change their minds in the end – Mother would never vote any way except the way the bishop advised, and Father really does believe that it is our duty to Britain to send all the men they ask for – but at least I could explain in a way that made sense.

Politics do make the oddest bedfellows, don’t they? There’s me out of sorts with Mother and Father over this, and then I went to the victory rally after the vote was announced, and you will never guess who I saw there! Molly Collins, the wife of that sergeant who oversaw your probation after the Academy. She was there with her little boy, Hugh, who is the spitting image of his father, and looking so excited by all the noise and chanting. We got talking and she said that her Joe was too old to be conscripted, and her boy, of course, far too young, but she would never vote to send boys to die for the British after what they had done in Dublin. Her brother and sister still live there and send her all the news. I tried to tell her what you wrote to me about the Irish regiment you were fighting alongside in the summer, but I don’t think she was listening. I know Mother would have been horrified to see me speaking so familiarly to an Irishwoman in the streets like that, but I remembered how kind Sergeant Collins was to you, and her little boy was so sweet.

I must end there. Lavvie wants the desk to write a letter to Robert and I have about a million miles of bandage to hem for the next Red Cross shipment Mrs Stanley is organising. There is so much I want to tell you, about how much I miss you and how I worry about you over there. Do take care of yourself, my darling. Make sure you wear those socks and that vest I sent you. And stay safe. The news from France is dreadful but I know you will come home to your loving wife,

Rosie

* * *

Melbourne

September, 1917

Darling Jack,

Well, you boys don’t get to have all the excitement in France! We’ve been having such times here, and yes, even your own wife has been caught up in some of them. You know I told you about all the meeting Adela Pankhurst has been having over food prices, the ones that so shocked Mrs Stanley and made Father so furious and anxious. Well, of course I would never attend one of her meetings myself, although I do see she has a point. Food prices are outrageous – they are quite worrying Mother to death, and it isn’t as if grain stores weren’t sitting in the warehouses being eaten by weevils. If it was actually being sent over to France, as well as all that frozen meat requisitioned by the British, I don’t think we would mind paying the prices. Father is quite right that we all have to make sacrifices to win this war, and ours is so much less that all that you are sacrificing for our sake, I do know that, my darling. But it just sits there – and the wharfies out on strike because of the suspension of shipping, so their families don’t have the money to pay the higher prices and oh! it is just wretched!

Well, last week Miss Pankhurst addressed a crowd out at Yarraville to raise fund for the wharfies and their families, and then at the weekend led a ‘monster’ rally which descended into a riot. Poor Father! They had to call in support from all the suburbs, the violence was so bad, and they ended up breaking it up with batons! Mother, Lavvie and I sat up half the night, terrified that he wouldn’t come home, but he did in the end, although it wasn’t until past midnight! The Chief Commissioner of Police and the Chief Secretary made an appeal for special constables to assist the police against protestors and rioters the next day, but on Monday there was a big meeting at the town hall here in Richmond. I was queueing at the butchers for Mother, who has far too much to do at home to spend hours on the shopping, when Molly Collins came rushing down the street and grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me away. I was so shocked I didn’t even resist for a moment but just followed her around the corner where she said that the protesters were bent on mischief and I was best off out of it. I was just going to ask her what she meant when we heard the sound of breaking glass and looking around the corner saw a large crowd of women smashing the butcher’s windows with bricks and yelling ‘Profiteer!’ and ‘German scum!’ and much worse. 

Oh, Jack! I have never been so frightened in my life. Knowing you used to face such things every day made me feel so proud of you! I know you were protecting us, just as Father has always done. I did, just for a moment, wish that you were here, making things safe for us at home. I know that is what you are doing over there, but I can’t help it, Jack, I miss you, and never more so than now. I don’t mean to be selfish, darling, but I can’t help the way I feel.

Things do seem to have become quieter since. Father says that nearly 400 special constables have been recruited, and there is a new ‘move on’ regulation so Miss Pankhurst won’t be able to hold any more of her rallies. He came home last night looking very pleased because there were plans for a demonstration on Smith Street in Collingwood, but they had managed to prevent it without any violence. I know it doesn’t solve the food shortages, but I will be so glad if it means the riots are over!

I have invited Mrs Collins around for tea, and asked her to bring her little boy with her. Mother is scandalised, but heaven knows what would have happened if she hadn’t been there to warn me, and anyway, her husband is on the force so she is perfectly respectable, even if she is Irish. 

In your last you wrote that you were in rest. I hope that is still true and that you are having less exciting times than we have been having here. Mother, Father and Lavvie all send their love and, of course, you have all of mine.

Your loving wife,

Rosie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the Gallipoli campaign, the AIF returned to Egypt from where the infantry was redeployed to the Western Front via training camps in Britain. Salisbury Plain was the location one of the principal Command Depots for Australian troops.
> 
> Unlike Britain, where women were recruited to a range of auxiliary units which provided labour to replace men recruited to the army, including on the land and jobs such as tram conductors, no such units were formed in Australia. Other than the 2000 nurses recruited to the Australian Army Medical Services, women’s war service was limited to providing ‘soldier’s comforts’ via philanthropic committees, primarily those coordinated by the Red Cross. See Mark Peel and Christina Twomey, _A History of Australia_ , second ed., 2018.
> 
> Again unlike Britain (and New Zealand, Canada and the US), Australia never introduced conscription, despite the fact that the demand for manpower was constant. In 1916, British demands for 75,000 Australian men led to the first of two conscription plebiscites. Conscription was defeated both times, by 72,000 votes in October 1916 and by 167,000 in December 1917. For the most part, conscription was supported by the major daily newspapers, the Protestant churches and the academic and professional classes, with pacifists, trade unions and the Catholic church opposing. Sectarian divisions were muted during the first campaign, but were much more divisive during the second. Women in Australia have had the vote since 1902; the women’s vote was a particular target of campaigning, particularly in the second campaign. Most men serving overseas voted against conscription. Mark Peel and Christina Twomey, in _A History of Australia_ , quote Nathanial Jacka, whose words I have adapted: 'we should keep free the land for which out sons went freely to fight'. Jacka had two sons fighting in Europe when he, his wife and daughters were campaigning against conscription.
> 
> In addition to the conscription debates, throughout the war Australia was riven by a series of strikes and food riots. The war disrupted shipping at the same time that the British military requisitioned much of Australia’s meat and grain production. The result was that food was left to rot in warehouses while food prices rose and factory and dock workers were losing their jobs, making it harder for them to make ends meet. Adela Pankhurst, daughter of Emmaline, arrived in Australia in mid-1914 and proceeded to help form the Women’s Peace Army. In addition to speaking engagements across the country, Pankhurst helped organise the Socialist Party of Victoria and spearheaded a series of demonstrations which descended into violence in August and September of 1917. One in Richmond on 24th September ended with the windows of the butchers Angliss & Co. being smashed. For this, and all the details of the policing of the demonstrations, see Judith Smart, ‘Feminists, Food and the Fair Price: The cost of living demonstrations in Melbourne, August-September 1917’ in Joy Damousi and Marilyn Lake, eds., _Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century_ , 2005.


End file.
